


Entr'acte

by rthstewart



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types
Genre: Genderswap, M/M, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Entr'acte:  French, 1. The interval between two acts of a theatrical performance.  2. Another performance, as of music or dance, provided between two acts of a theatrical performance.</p>
<p>Peter Guillam, Ricki Tarr, and the dark, sharp, in-between spaces.  Five times Guillam did not sleep with Tarr, and the one time he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entr'acte

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chimerari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chimerari/gifts).



> Entr'acte: French, 1. The interval between two acts of a theatrical performance. 2. Another performance, as of music or dance, provided between two acts of a theatrical performance.
> 
> Peter Guillam, Ricki Tarr, and the dark, sharp, in-between spaces. Five times Guillam did not sleep with Tarr, and the one time he did.
> 
> Thanks to fallofman and inkvoices for the beta.
> 
> For Chimerari who preferred slash or genderswap femslash, but gen is totally cool too. Can be the movie-verse or the book-verse, the rest is up to you author, but I shall be eternally grateful if you squeeze in plenty of angst
> 
> I keep trying to tweak the notes to provide adequate notice. I followed my lovely requester's prompts and hir own fics in this fandom. This is neither exclusively book nor film canon but relies heavily upon the book to fill the many film gaps and the prompt. This features a gender-swapped Fawn and for those who know the book, Camilla, Peter's flautist girlfriend, becomes Richard.
> 
> Spoilers for book and film including identity of the Mole.

**_One_ **

Peter Guillam almost didn’t bother reading the note on his windscreen that morning.  He would have driven out of the garage and used the wipers to flush the thing away to join the rest of the rubbish on the side of the ugly road on the way to the uglier Brixton.

 

The day before everything changed had been like every other day of the last 10 years.  There had been a man at a wine bar off Charing Cross who swore his mistress would sell them all the secrets of the Soviet Military Attaché in Brussels.  All she wanted was 20,000 pounds, a flat in Paris, and a Porsche. 

 

It wasn’t real.  If had been, Guillam and his grubby scalphunters would have never gotten the tip.  With no juicy target to burn and offer up as a sacrifice to the gods of the Circus’ London Station, it was back to scalphunter exile in Brixton. 

 

He kissed Richard good-bye and promised supper after Richard’s concert.  Guillam had decided to work late and skip the Benjamin Britten-heavy programme.

 

With thoughts no more complicated than a dinner reservation near the Royal Albert Hall and whistling the Toreador song – _Carmen_ was banal but Bizet’s melodies infectious – Guillam walked from his Eaton Place flat the 236 steps, two alleys, eight doorways (seven occupied, one vacant), to his garage.   Down sixteen steps and past twelve stalls, eight empty – that MG hadn’t been moved in a month. 

 

At first, he thought it might be a flyer wedged under the wiper of his Citroën but the garage didn’t permit soliciting.  It was one reason he paid the exorbitant fees to keep his car there.  Guillam pried the sheet from under the wiper.  It was a note, folded carefully, written on a page from a cheap notebook.  The blue ink was starting to smear in the autumn damp. 

 

_You’ve got a smart car.  If you’re interested in selling for a good price, I can meet you at the Liberty Shopping Centre.  Noon?  I know a quiet pub near the Romford station where we can talk._

_T. Trench_

 

_Trench?_

 

Inside, his heart started pounding. 

 

On the outside, for the watchers, if there were watchers, and he assumed there always were watchers, Guillam rolled his eyes, crumpled the paper between his fingers and slid the scrap into his pocket.  He’d burn it in his ashtray.

 

_Trench._   That was Ricki Tarr’s workname.  Guillam had ordered Tarr to Istanbul six months ago to try to lure a low-level Soviet trade delegate into defecting but it had gone the other way.  Tarr had liked Boris’ vodka so much he’d followed the man all the way back to Moscow Centre.  Defection had been bad enough; everything Tarr knew, and he knew a lot of dirty secrets, was considered blown.  But before catching the slow boat across the Black Sea to Mother Russia, Tarr had killed Tufty Thesinger, the Circus’ head of station in Istanbul.  Guillam wouldn’t have mourned the loss of such a fool, but Tufty was Percy Alleline’s man.  So Guillam’s man had murdered a personal friend of the Chief of British intelligence and _then_ defected.

 

And now the traitor had come home?  He’d used the catchphrase – _quiet near talk_ – which meant Tarr wanted to meet _privately_?

 

The hell he did.  Guillam walked, not leaping up the steps two at a time as he wanted, to the nearest phone box.  He wasn’t going to meet that bastard Tarr alone.  Guillam wanted a babysitter to pin Tarr’s arms back while he beat the prick bloody.

****

**_Two_ **

He'd first met Tarr in Oran in the middle of the French-Algerian War.  Guillam had inherited a small network from the great Bill Haydon and built it into a web of spies that stretched across North Africa from Casablanca to Cairo.  The climate in Egypt became unhealthy once Nasser and his Soviet gorillas started hanging or shooting Guillam’s agents.  Guillam ran to Oran and planned to keep running all the way across the border into Morocco.  The FLN were roaming the streets of the port city cutting European throats. 

 

Somehow they missed Tarr, which really was a pity.

 

Tarr was fresh from big game hunting Mau Mau in Kenya Colony.  The night he sauntered into the export office, Guillam had been at the end of his rope and ready to hang from it.  He’d been holed up in the abandoned space for a week, eating food out of tins, and hiding in the cupboards as militias roamed the streets with guns and machetes.  He sat at the telex holding the strings and feeling the delicate lines to his precious agents being cut, one by one. 

 

“Peter, darling, Ricki’s home!” Tarr crowed, sounding like a bad American television programme.  Tarr had sold his passport for passage on a fishing boat from Mogadishu and four bottles of French Calvados.  He’d already drunk two of them and was offering Guillam the third if he could make him some papers so they (it had suddenly become _they_ ) could get the hell out of Oran. 

 

While Tarr was prying open a tin of sardines, Guillam got the cables that Samir, the Faris brothers, and Hamza and his sons, had all been caught in a sweep.  They were among the last and the North African network was in shambles.  He’d try to salvage what he could in Casablanca but, as he burned the cables, Guillam knew he was probably returning to the Circus, in his socks, with a price on his head, tail between his legs, and the blood of at least thirty agents on his hands. 

 

He and Tarr huddled in the dark of the export office at the port, waiting for the street fighting to move on and hearing people being beaten and gutted.  It didn’t matter anymore if it was the French Army, the FLN or just troublemakers throwing petrol on the fire.  They just hoped to get out of the port without it being burned down around them.  On the off chance that they could hoof it overland to Morocco, Guillam made up a passport for Tarr, not under the name _Trench_. 

 

They drank to the music of the screams outside.  Guillam was drunk enough that he didn’t recall much of the fucking that came after.  He remembered being surprised.   Tarr had, to hear him tell it, a wife in every port and a girlfriend in every bar.  But when flares lit up the office from the port side and they dove to the floor, Tarr’s hand ended up in his crotch and a killer’s ruthless fingers were around his hardening cock.  For a while the pain of his agents hung dead by the strings he had once held hurt a little less.

 

**_Three_ **

Guillam lost track of Tarr after Oran.  With his networks in ruins and agents murdered, Guillam shuffled about London Station and entered the long, slow, dull life of the grounded, middle-aged pro.  He did the bidding of the Fifth Floor overlords, for Control, the head of the Circus, and Control’s errand boy, George Smiley.  There were small-time defectors to lure, indiscreet, low-level diplomats to blackmail, dead letter boxes to clear and honey traps to bait.  Tarr, Guillam heard, developed a reputation as accident-prone – suicides and diplomatic crises tended to follow the man like Biblical plagues.

 

Tarr re-entered his life the day Guillam was installed as the new Director of Scalphunter Operations.  Guillam’s elevation from messenger boy to head Scalphunter might have been perceived as a promotion.  Circus insiders knew better.  Scalphunters did the jobs that were too rough and too dirty for other agents – veritable 007s they were, but without the expenses, tuxedos, and Aston-Martins. The scalphunters had been Control’s creation, an association that was no favour to the outfit now, even apart from the scalphunters’ reputation for stealing the family silver and pushing indecisive “suicides” out of windows. 

 

After decades as Chief, Control had cracked, launched Operation Testify, started a private war with the Czechs, and almost brought the whole Circus down on top of them.  A British agent, the famous Jim Prideaux, had paid the price of Control’s madness with two bullets in his back and a blown operation splattered all over the _Times._

 

Two months after the Testify debacle, Control was dead and his wing-man, Smiley, shoved out.  Guillam had been Smiley’s man and so he was pushed out of London Station and ordered to fill Prideaux’s old job as chief Scalphunter.   Instead of whiling away the hours in the Circus drinking stewed tea with Bill Haydon and trawling the docks for immigrant informants, it was exile to an abandoned school in Brixton, ping pong, snooker, watching television with criminals, and waiting until a foreign station needed someone’s throat cut and called on the scalphunters to do it.   The Brixton operation was the Circus-equivalent of exile to Siberia. 

 

When Guillam entered the dingy common room, Tarr and another scalphunter, Cy Vanhofer, were throwing knives for distance into the walls.  The ping pong table was in pieces.  The other agents were hunched over old school desks playing cards.  A television, with the screen punched out, was on its side on a floor that hadn’t been washed since the schoolboys abandoned the place.

 

“Mr. Guillam!” Tarr called as he pulled his knife out of the wall.  “What brings a fancy London Station man such as yourself out here to mingle with the proles?”

 

“The scenery and company,” Guillam said. 

 

“We’re under new management,” Guillam told them as the scalphunters crowded, resentfully and suspiciously, into Prideaux’s – now his – office.  It was a large, barely renovated classroom but it seemed crowded because the ten men were giving a small, quiet woman named Fawn a very wide berth. 

 

Guillam let everyone light up and passed around ashtrays.  “It’s called lateralism.  London Station is the centre and they hold all the strings.  All operations cleared through Bill Haydon and the Fifth Floor.  No more private wars on Soviet client states.  No more unauthorized excursions.  No more skimming from the Reptile Fund for jaunts to Monte Carlo.”

 

Tarr scowled.  “Who’ll change our nappies?”

 

“Me,” Guillam said.  “Next?”

 

“What about bullets?” Vanhofer asked.  "We still get those?"

 

“Yes,” Guillam replied.  Showing he understood them, he added, “Guns, knives and other weapons are also authorised.”

 

The other scalphunters flinched when Fawn quietly asked, “Garrote wire?”

 

“Even bows and arrows if that’s your preference,” Guillam said.  “You’ll only need London Station's prior approval if you want a missile.”

 

 “What about Prideaux?” Tarr put in.  “What about our boss?”

 

 “I’m your boss now,” Guillam said.

 

“Mr. Guillam’s on top now, is he?” Tarr retorted with a leer.

 

“Always.  And behind as well.”  _And Tarr would know_.

 

With that, Guillam drew more laughs than Tarr did and the others began clamouring for the information that really mattered.  _Where is Prideaux?  Is he dead?  Is he alive?  Did they get him back from the Czechs?  Is it true Prideaux sold out all our Czech agents to save his own skin?_

 

Guillam made a big ceremony of unfolding the slip of paper with the script he’d received from Toby Esterhase.  “Jim Prideaux is dead,” he read to them.  Whether that was literally true, figuratively true, or a bald-faced lie wasn’t for them, or him, to know. 

 

The scalphunters repaired the ping pong table and Guillam promised he’d try to get a new television set.  No one in London Station would return his phone calls, but Guillam had been there for years and knew a few accounting tricks. 

 

Cleaning out Prideaux’s old office and making it his own took the rest of the week.  The agents would wander in now and again to talk about Prideaux and share a smoke and a story about a burn and bag they’d done with the man or about a hit in Bratislava or Tirana. 

 

The scalphunters had all heard Tarr’s stories about their time North Africa and the flight out of Oran, though Tarr  omitted the parts about the rough gropes and fucking.  Tarr had puffed up his own derring-do.  Because Tarr’s boasts established Guillam’s own _bona fides,_ Guillam didn't contradict him.  He wasn’t just the pen-pushing Nancy from London Station – he’d been in the same hellholes they had, had killed as they had, and had felt the same dark isolation.  He knew what it was like to wait for the mark with nothing but half a pack of Players (Marlboros if you were lucky) and a gun for company and the hope that you’d kill him before they killed you.  They were a rag-tag collection of thugs and thieves for whom Guillam was now responsible, the Peter Pan to murderous Lost Boys. 

 

Guillam worried he’d need a cracksman to break open the office safe but the old dial knew the way and, with a sensitive touch, it opened like a virgin schoolgirl.  Inside the safe was a year’s worth of expense reports which went right into the burn bag and enough currency from six countries to pay for a colour television set. 

 

Behind the safe, Guillam found an old squash racquet with faded Oxford college colours and the initials _JP_ cut on the handle.  Assuming the rumours were true, and, it took one to know one, so he _knew_ they weren’t just rumours, Guillam ran a thumb over the racquet looking for a second set of initials.  They were small but he found them – _BH_ – Bill Haydon - cut into the rim. 

 

His new secretary saw the racquet and burst into tears.  The scalphunters were subdued when Guillam took the racquet into the common room and hung it above the repaired ping pong table. 

 

It became a shrine.  The men began decorating the wall around Jim Prideaux’s racquet with anonymous trophies from their successful hunts and hits – spent casings, empty cigarette packs, ticket stubs, maps, and the odd bit of foreign currency.  Prideaux might have sold out their Eastern European networks to save himself a sweating by Moscow Centre gorillas, but he’d been one of the best field agents in the Circus, the first scalphunter, and their first Chief. 

 

Scalphunters were despised, lonely, and feared.  Loyalty to their own was the only thing they had.

 

So when Guillam sent Tarr off to Istanbul to reel in a small-time Soviet trade delegate, and Tarr didn’t turn Boris, but was turned _by_   Boris, and ran off to Moscow Centre with the family jewels, the betrayal stung. 

 

Tarr would have to die; Guillam was glad he’d be the one to do it.  A scalphunter was owed that much. 

 

**_Four_ **

For his meeting with the prodigal Tarr at the Liberty Shopping Centre, Guillam decided to bring Fawn for the extra protection.  He had yet to figure out why all the scalphunters were afraid of Fawn – she didn’t seem outwardly crazy but Guillam was never sure if the cuts on Fawn’s arms were earned in knife fights or were self-inflicted.  She did have a high tolerance for pain.

 

The Liberty was a very modern shopping centre and busy at the noon hour with loitering teenagers and mothers pushing prams.  Elton John was blaring from a record store.  He and Fawn circled the outdoor square and then, suddenly, Tarr was there, fidgeting nervously on an out-of-the-way bench shoved up against a wall.  Tarr nodded to where Fawn was hovering by a phone box, patted the bulging side pocket of his jacket and then crossed his arms over his chest.

 

So, Tarr was armed, knew Guillam had brought a babysitter, and he wanted protection, not a fight.  Guillam still thought he’d have to kill Tarr but he was perversely proud of how well one of his scalphunters had set this up.  He would lull Tarr into complacency, get the jump on him, pummel him senseless, tie him up, shove him in the boot of the car and drop him either into the Thames or prison.

 

Tarr had the haggard, tense weariness of someone on the run.  He was sporting three days of beard and a ragged hair cut.  His eyes were an addict’s red, though Tarr was too warily alert to be high on anything except too much coffee.  It was a look Guillam remembered well from Oran.  The soles on Tarr’s boots were worn out and his blue jeans were gray from hard washing and fraying at the bottom.   

 

There were no insults, no cheery “ _G’day Mr. Guillam, it’s Ricki, darling_ ,” no ill-timed crotch grabbing or salacious winks. 

 

Tarr squirmed and scooted over on the bench.  “Thanks for coming, Mr. Guillam, and not shooting me on sight.”

 

“I’ll let Fawn do that.  What the hell is going on, Tarr?  We have you down as defected.  Did you get tired of borscht and vodka so now you’re turning again?” 

 

“Defected?” Tarr said with a snort.  “That’s rich.”

 

He looked around nervously, saw Fawn, and relaxed a little.  Given that Fawn’s presence usually made the scalphunters skittish, it was _very_ odd that Tarr would be more at ease with her walking their perimeter.  “It’s Moscow Centre that wants me dead, boss.”

 

“Double-crossing tends to cause that…” 

 

“I didn’t defect,” Tarr repeated.  “They want to kill me because of Irina.” 

 

“Irina?  Who the hell is Irina?”

 

Tarr paled and licked his lips.  His fingers were moving against one another, picking away peeling skin from gnawed-on nails.  “Mr. Guillam, would you mind stepping to the side so we can keep a better eye on things?”

 

“Cease the theatrics, Tarr.”

 

“It’s not for show, boss,” Tarr insisted.  A couple strolled by, arguing about train schedules.  He waited until they passed.  “This is bloody dangerous and you can’t trust anyone.  That’s what got me into this rat’s nest and now you’re in for it, too.”

 

Guillam couldn’t credit Tarr’s fear.  The man had earned his stripes smuggling guns in Malaysia and killing Mau Mau tribesmen; the two of them had run across North Africa dodging Soviet agents, armed militias and gangs with machetes.  Tarr was a loaded gun always waiting to go off but he was no coward. 

 

“Tarr, what in…”

 

Tarr nodded toward Fawn and rubbed his forehead.  Understanding passed between them in scalphunter language and Fawn began circling the courtyard again.

 

“So London Station really didn’t tell you why I missed my return?  No one told you I had a Moscow Centre agent who wanted to jump and claimed to have information crucial to the well-being of the Circus?” 

 

That was the moment when Guillam really started listening.  He sat down next to Tarr.

 

“No.  The only thing I heard was that you killed the head of the Istanbul station and had defected.”

 

Tarr shook his head with a grimace.  “Tufty was a berk, but I didn’t kill him.  The Russians got there first.”

 

“The Russians?  Why would they kill a harmless buffoon like Thesinger?”

 

“Probably because they thought he’d read my cables to London Station.”  Tarr jerked his head to the side.  “In my jacket pocket.  Take it out.  Read it.” 

 

There was no flirting or crowding, no thigh pressed against his own, no innuendo about hands in pockets.  Guillam reached into Tarr’s pocket and removed a pack of folded up notebook paper – the same paper Tarr had used for the note on his car window. 

 

“I put it there ‘cause if I tried reaching for anything, Fawn’d cut me open in the middle of the shopping centre.” 

 

Guillam glanced over the papers.  “This is your writing.”

 

“I copied it from Irina’s diary.  She was Boris’ wife and partner in crime.  I cabled London Station, told them she wanted to defect and that she claimed to have vital information about the Circus.  But instead of sending the RAF to collect us in Istanbul, a mole in London Station told the Russians.”

 

With each word, the tale became more and more absurd.  “A mole?” Guillam scoffed.  Tarr was away with the fairies.  “In the Circus?  That’s…”

 

“Just read it for Christ’s sake.”  There was something pleadingly vulnerable in Tarr that was unsettling in such a cocksure bastard.  “Irina managed to leave the diary in our drop box before the gorillas tumbled her and hauled her back to Moscow.  They killed Tufty before they left town.  I found the diary, copied it, put the original back, and got the next boat out.” 

 

What the hell was Tarr talking about?  This wasn’t James Bond.  “You’ve been gone for six months, Tarr!  Where did you go if not the Kremlin or Siberia?  The Fifth Floor has been calling for your head.”

 

Tarr snorted.  “And if the mole knew I’d read Irina’s diary, he’d be looking for the rest of me even harder than he is.”  He chewed on his fingernails; his eyes darted around but there were only pimply, truant teens and harried mothers.  No one around them had the alertness of pavement artists and hoods.  The record store had switched to the Stones.  “I’ve been laying low in Kuala Lumpur.”

 

That manoeuvre was classic Tarr – go native and hope it all blew over.  “With one of your wives?”

 

“Yeah, Lela, and my kid, Danny.  I came in yesterday.  Flew cargo from the Peninsula to Jo’burg.  Then soft route to Dublin.”

 

Tarr’s routes would take a month to retrace and that assumed he’d really made his way back to London on his own from KL, rather than with Russian aid from a KGB resort in Siberia.

 

“Why’d you come back, Tarr?  Why now?”

 

Tarr turned stubbornly and sullenly silent. 

 

“Did something happen?” Guillam pressed.  “Or did you just get homesick for football and tea at Fortnum’s?”

 

“Why it was my patriotic duty, Mr. Guillam,” Tarr fired back, looking nervy and sounding more like his pain-in-the-arse self.  Tarr had always been a rotten liar. 

 

He stood.  “Just read Irina’s diary.  I’m going to go have a smoke with Fawn and see who’s got the longer knife scars.”

 

Guillam sat back on the bench and then started forward, not liking the feel of leaning on the slimy wall.  Tarr sauntered up to Fawn; he didn’t hear what they said but Fawn gave Tarr a light.  They began walking slowly about, pretending not to carefully watch each person in the shopping centre. 

 

David Bowie started playing.  The lunchtime crowds were thinning. 

 

The folded papers in his hands were deeply creased and dirty and the words were smeared in hastily written dark blue streaks.  Guillam delicately worried a page between his fingers.  That this was obviously older than the note Tarr put on his windscreen but from the same notebook lent some credence to both. 

 

And if Tarr was telling the truth, he’d been carrying this woman’s diary around for six months, like a child with a precious rag doll.  What did Tarr’s wife, Lela, think of that? 

 

_Houses of the Holy_ blared from the record store.  Guillam’s tastes had always veered toward French composers and American jazz; Richard played that and so much else beautifully, but also had appalling taste in English rock with a particular affinity for Led Zeppelin and David Bowie. 

 

Guillam unfolded the pages. 

 

_Thomas, listen, I am talking to you_ , he read.  _Anthony Thomas_ was one of Tarr’s covers.  Guillam skimmed the love talk and odd discussion of God and saints.  Maybe Tarr had seduced Irina with Bible quotations?  Tarr’s father had been a firebrand preacher in Singapore before the War so Tarr could probably weave something from the sexy bits of Song of Songs. 

 

 

> _Thomas, you must take care.  Have you heard of Karla?  He is an old fox, the most cunning in Moscow Centre, the most secret; even his name is not a name Russians understand._

_Karla._ This mess of Tarr’s went all the way up to _Karla_ , the shadowy mastermind of Soviet intelligence?

 

 

> _The story is as follows, Thomas.  It concerns a great conspiracy, perhaps the greatest we have.  You should tell it only to most trustworthy people.  You must tell no one in the Circus except Percy Alleline, for no one can be trusted._
> 
> _There is a mole in London known by the code name Gerald.  He has been recruited by Karla._

Guillam stopped and carefully re-read the lines which repeated Tarr’s earlier accusation.  _A_ _mole?  In the Circus?_   Surely this was ridiculous.  Except…

 

Except they had agents embedded all over the world and informants in other intelligence services.  The British had perfected the art of the double-cross during the War, how to reel an agent in and carefully feed him back to the other side.  Shouldn’t he assume that Moscow Centre was capable of a similar penetration of British intelligence?

 

 

> _Gerald is a high functionary in the Circus.  Thomas, I tell you this because I love you.  I do not wish to think of an English gentleman behaving as a traitor, though naturally I believe Gerald was right to join the workers’ cause.  I fear for the safety of anyone employed by the Circus.  Thomas, I love you; take care with this knowledge – it could hurt you also._

Again, he paused and carefully read, trying to remain calm and objective over a sinking stomach and rising fear.  _Why couldn’t the damned record store play Debussy instead of Gary Glitter?_

 

Tarr didn’t speak Russian, so Irina must have written in her non-native English.  Guillam had studied the language and the cadence and structure of the diary had the hallmarks of an awkward Russian translation. 

 

So, the diary read right but did the story it told hold up?  He couldn’t check its veracity, but did it have the ring and feel of truth?  He would normally dismiss as an elaborate trap the scenario of a desperate woman pouring out her wretched life in a diary for a British assassin to find.  With Ricki Tarr, though, it could happen.  He’d felt that pull of reckless attraction himself.  For a lonely Russian agent longing for love, Tarr and his careless offer of freedom could be a lifeline.  How would Tarr have explained Lela and the other wives, Guillam wondered.

 

As bad as the English rock was, the American music was so much worse.  _Candy Man?_

 

He skimmed more love talk and drunken ramblings about God and truth and focused on the parts where he saw the lucid, concise observations of a trained agent.  Irina wrote of the mole Gerald’s recruitment and how all the fruits of British intelligence were copied, filmed, recorded, and funnelled from Gerald the mole to Karla’s agent, Colonel Viktorov-Polyakov in London.  Guillam’s unease blossomed to true alarm.  As someone who had toiled in London Station for years, and been in the field for years before that, what Irina wrote of bespoke a familiarity with Circus procedures that Tarr didn’t have.  Irina knew more than Tarr did and her very good information had to have come from a credible source who knew London Station very, very well,

 

Guillam glanced up again and looked around.  Tarr’s paranoid caution had become contagious.  From across the square, Tarr stared back at him, grim-faced. Shivering, he had to turn the page sideways to finish reading. 

 

This time he read carefully of Irina’s passionate love for Tarr of all people.  Was there ever a man less worthy of it?  Her hope of escape gave way to despair and finally terror as she saw suspicious Russian handlers closing in on her.   

 

 

> _Thomas, I am telling this also because I am afraid.  This morning when I woke, Boris was sitting on the bed, staring at me like a madman.  When I went downstairs for coffee, the guards watched me like animals._
> 
> _Have you been indiscreet, Thomas?  Did you tell more than you let me think?  Now you see why I insisted that you must only tell Percy Alleline.  I can guess what you have told them.  You need not blame yourself._

Tarr surely did blame himself.  He’d believed Irina no more than Guillam had believed Tarr and had followed the protocols.  Tarr had cabled London Station and told them he had a defector claiming to have vital information about the Circus.  It appeared that to keep Karla and Gerald’s secret, Thesinger, Boris, and Irina had all paid the price for Tarr’s failure to heed his lover’s vague, paranoid warnings. 

 

It was all ludicrous.  It was absurd, insane, mad, and it was Ricki Tarr for Christ’s sake.  But it felt real and Guillam couldn’t ignore that.  He could not dismiss the diary as he would an Ian Fleming novel. 

 

Guillam carefully folded the letter up and turned it over in his hands.  Tarr and Fawn joined him at the bench.  He stared at Tarr’s muddy boots and Fawn’s pristine trainers.  He handed the letter back. 

 

“Thanks, boss,” Tarr said, sounding more genuine than Guillam had ever heard.  Reverently, Tarr tucked the pages into an envelope and slid it into an inside pocket of his jacket.  Tarr had kept it for six months safely; Guillam wasn’t going to make him part with it now. 

 

“I’m not going to say I believe you, Tarr,” Guillam said.  “But you’re a lousy liar and you’re not smart enough to come up with this on your own.”  He looked around.  The music store was blasting a track from _Quadrophenia_.  They’d been here too long and needed to get moving.  He fished through his pockets for some coins.  “I need to make a phone call and then we’re going for a drive.”

 

Tarr turned wary and took a step away but Fawn was right with him.  Fawn would break Tarr’s leg to keep him from escaping.  Tarr knew it, too.  He sagged.  “Fine. 

 

Guillam shut himself in the phone box.  Fumbling with coins and running numbers through his head, the enormity of it hit him straight on, an iron-fist to the gut.  It couldn’t be true.  _It couldn’t_.  So, why not just leave it, execute some rough justice on Tarr, and go back to Brixton and ping pong? 

 

To turn his back on Tarr’s accusation and Irina’s sacrifice had the taint of betraying a lover.  His own bloodlines weren’t as venerable as Bill Haydon’s and his career not as storied, but Guillam was old Circus all the same.  His father had been a spy during the War and his mother had done something with codes.  This wasn’t just a job or even a career; the Circus had been his whole life, for his entire life.  She was an adoptive parent and the family he would never have. 

 

The men of British intelligence had helped win the War and now held back the tide of Communist darkness.  He passionately believed in them.  He loved them.  Only Richard held a more privileged place in his hierarchy of love and loyalty.

 

The coins kept sticking to his sweaty hands and his breath was fogging up the inside of the phone box. 

 

Guillam knew he couldn’t walk away from this.  But neither could he run down a mole alone.  He’d end up like Tufty, or would have to follow Tarr to a hill village in Kuala Lumpur and even that might not be safe.  Given Tarr’s wariness, Guillam suspected someone had come looking for him and that had spooked Tarr back to England to get help.

 

Calling the Circus was right out.  All calls were recorded.  Irina had thought only Alleline would do, but Guillam knew how it worked.  Anything that went to Alleline would involve the rest of the Fifth Floor and Alleline _could_ even _be_ the mole – assuming Gerald existed – though Guillam personally thought Alleline was too stupid to run something this sophisticated for so long. 

 

He could go to George Smiley.  Smiley was forced out into retirement so he’d be safe now, wouldn’t he?  Guillam tapped the dial.  No, the regulation (be damned) said he wasn’t supposed to have any contact with Smiley at all. 

 

It was, Guillam realized with an exhale of relief, beyond his pay grade to make these decisions.  He’d ring up Lacon and dump Tarr and the rest of the mess on him.  An investigation from the outside would have to come from Whitehall and that meant it landed on the watch of Oliver Lacon, the Assistant Minister in charge of intelligence operations and the Circus’ head prefect.      

 

It was the oldest question of the service.  How do you sniff out the fox without running with him?  Who could spy on the spies?

 

Outside the phone box, Tarr was rubbing his arm and scowling.  Fawn had probably hit him.  It had started with insane, unlucky, darling Ricki Tarr.  Guillam couldn’t imagine where it would end, but he’d have to see it through.

 

He picked up the receiver and started shoving coins into the telephone.  The game was afoot, as Sherlock Holmes would say. 

 

**_Five_ **

On the long drive from London to the Liverpool ferry, Tarr talked on, and on and on about his idyllic future.  The mole would be gone, they’d clean out the Circus with a shovel, and Tarr would relocate to the Scottish Highlands with Irina and Lela, his Malaysian wife (not to be confused with the African wife, the Spanish wife, the Chinese wife, or the Tahitian wife), and his daughter. 

 

Guillam tried to not listen.  The roads and weather were terrible and his mood even worse.   Tarr rattling on about rolls in the heather made it impossible for Guillam to put out of mind how much Richard hated Scotland.  They’d loved Bordeaux and the Amalfi Coast.  New York had been wonderful when Richard had played at Carnegie Hall.  They’d stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria.

 

But with Smiley’s not-so-veiled warnings, he’d sent Richard packing last night as just another loose end to be cut off.  Guillam couldn’t even explain why.  He’d just told Richard he had to leave, now, and Richard had perceptively assumed there was someone else in Guillam’s life.  There were several someones – a fat, old, paranoid spy, a mole, a Whitehall minister, and the unstable, accident-prone scalphunter in the passenger seat who continued to demonstrate poor judgment and even worse timing by persistently trying to slide his hand too close to Guillam’s thigh.

 

Miserable with guilt over a sacrifice Guillam had never wanted to make and knowing he was confusing Richard with his inconsistency – hands and eyes contradicted the hollow words – he had helped with the packing.  Richard had seen to his clothes and his precious flutes and other instruments; Guillam had collected all of the sheet music, cleaning cloths, reeds, brushes, and oils, and the music stand that Richard had used when he rehearsed by the window overlooking the street.  Selfishly, Guillam stole a page from the arrangement of _Méditation_ from Massenet’s opera, _Thaïs_.  Guillam had fallen in love with Richard when he had heard him play the interlude from the second act. 

 

The mole had betrayed the Circus; Ann had betrayed Smiley; he had betrayed Richard; and Smiley had betrayed Tarr. 

 

“Irina’s got a lot of mother in her,” Tarr was saying. 

 

Guillam had no idea what Tarr meant by the bizarre statement.  He wasn’t going to ask for clarification. 

 

Tarr continued.  “When we catch the mole, I’ll make Mr. Smiley trade him to Karla for Irina.” 

 

Guillam had to slam on his brakes as a bank of sooty fog and Liverpool morning traffic hit at the same moment.  The car protested the abuse; they swerved and slowed to a crawl.

 

“Hmmmm,” Guillam replied and again brushed Tarr’s hand away from his leg.

 

Irina wouldn’t be joining Tarr’s romantic ménage á trois in Inverness. Prideaux had told Smiley that during his imprisonment and interrogation, the Soviets had shot a woman in the head.  The dead woman was surely Irina.  Smiley hadn’t told Tarr.  If Tarr knew the woman whom he loved and for whom he was taking all these insane risks was already dead, whatever he did next would be reckless, criminal, and likely blow the whole operation. 

 

Smiley lied to Tarr and Guillam had watched him do it.  So Guillam lied, too.

 

“Smiley said he’d see what he could do to get Irina back,” he told Tarr.  Tarr was a terrible liar.  Guillam was a very good liar; save the mole, Smiley was the best liar of them all.

 

Tarr turned gloomy and silent.  The reek of Liverpool filled the car.  Guillam finally pulled into the park at the ferry dock.  Soldiers milled about on their way to Ireland to do battle with the IRA.  It was all salt, soot, and steel covered with a slick of oil. 

 

“From Dublin, take the first flight you can to Paris,” Guillam told Tarr.  “Don’t hang around.  Keep your head down.”

 

“I know, I know,” Tarr replied shortly.  “Do you want to change my nappy, too?”

 

“We want you to flush out the mole.  Don’t let the Russians _or_ our side kill you first.” 

 

“Why Guillam, I didn’t know you cared.” 

 

“For Christ’s sake!”  Guillam shoved Tarr’s roving hand away.  “Get on the goddamned ferry and don’t kill anyone in the Paris residency!”

 

**_Six_ **

And then they caught the mole and then the mole was dead and it was over.  Sweeping up the detritus would take some time, but Smiley had a big broom and a mandate from the Minister.  Guillam was holding Smiley’s dustpan and dutifully taking it all out to the rubbish heap.

 

Tarr was one of those leftover dangling bits to be swept up or cut off.

 

The Paris residency cabled Tarr’s flight information.  Smiley offered to meet Tarr and break the news about Irina.  But Tarr was one of Guillam’s own, a scalphunter, and he wanted to finish the job even if, with Smiley ascendant, his exile at Brixton would end, too.  It had started with Guillam sending the man off to Istanbul almost a year ago.  Guillam felt he owed Tarr a clean finish.  Besides, Guillam reasoned that since he wasn’t there, Smiley could take the blame him for sending Tarr to Paris blind and ignorant about Irina’s murder. 

 

Guillam brought a bottle of Calvados for old time’s sake. 

 

Tarr bounded down the plane’s stairs and across the tarmac, face eager, colour high, every inch the conquering hero.

 

“Well, love, what do you have for Ricki?”

 

Guillam held up the bottle. 

 

Tarr studied him and the bottle and frowned.  “That bad?”

 

“Yes.”

 

They went into a bar in the airport.  It was furnished with turquoise and orange mosaic tiles, linoleum, splotched chrome, plastic chairs and Beatles acoustic mood music.  Tarr took two glasses from the bar and set them on a table near the window.  Through the filthy pane of glass, they could just see Pan Am and Air France planes taxiing back and forth.  Guillam took the seat that put his back to the wall.  Tarr sat, not across, but to the side and against a tiled pillar. 

 

Guillam poured.  The scent of the apple brandy brought back the memory of the sticky floor of the export office, Tarr’s hard hands and sharp teeth, the clacking telex announcing the deaths of good, brave men, and the screams of the butchered in the streets. 

 

They did not toast one another or cheerily clink glasses.

 

“Who was it?”  Tarr finally asked.

 

“Haydon.”

 

Tarr stared.  Yes, it would be even more shocking to the lower level ranks, the rough ones, the hoods, informants, and scalphunters, who’d had mean, brutal lives in the dark and yet had always stayed true, more or less, to God, Queen, and Country.  Someone like Tarr, well, he was a Colonial and a criminal, so of course it was assumed he’d sell out England for a high enough price.  But Haydon?  Haydon _was_ God, Queen, and Country.  Yet, it was the likes of the bastard Ricki Tarr who had stayed true. 

 

“That’s…  I mean, shit…”

 

They both took deep drafts of their drinks.  The liquor burned his tongue and throat.  Guillam took another sip, watched Tarr’s hand shake as he raised the glass to his lips again.

 

He still could not comprehend the depth of it himself.  Haydon had been their man, Circus blueblood, with the politically appropriate connections, wealth, looks, brains, Oxford oar above the mantle, the latter-day Lawrence of Arabia.  Haydon had the glamour that recalled the days when England ruled the sands and the waves and the sun never set upon her.  Patriotic.  Brilliant.  _The right sort, old fellow, don’t you know._   

 

“Betrayed us all,” Guillam said bitterly.  “Every blown operation, every Circus failure, every dead agent, _all_ my people in North Africa, _all of it_ , had Haydon at the centre.  All…” 

 

Guillam choked and washed the bile away by draining his glass.   “All our networks are compromised.  If we can’t get them out, all our field agents and informants are probably dead.  We won’t be able to trade, either.”

 

Tarr’s look turned sharp.  “Why not?  We always traded stock before, you show me yours, I show you mine.  Wouldn’t Moscow Centre give a lot to get Haydon back?  Irina…”

 

“Haydon was murdered at Sarrat.  We don’t have _anything_ to trade to Karla that he doesn’t already know.” 

 

“Fuck,” Tarr finally said into his drink.

 

“If you want,” Guillam replied, pouring them both another.  “I’m sorry about Irina, but...”

 

Tarr nodded and stared out the grimy window that rattled as a jet lumbered by.  He wiped a tear away that Guillam pretended to not see and rubbed his nose. 

 

“She lived long enough to be tortured into telling them everything she knew and not a minute longer,” Tarr finally said.  “It’s a lie thinking anything else.  There’s been enough of that, I guess.”

 

“Yes.”  Besides the enormity of the lies and the depth of the betrayal, there was, too, the nagging complicity.  _What was it the American cousins said?_   _If it’s too good to be true, it probably is._   In his darkest moments of painful clarity, Guillam _had_ suspected Haydon was the mole.  But he had turned from that truth for he could not face the prospect that his hero, his role model, his father-confessor, was false.  He took scant solace in the fact that everyone else in and outside the Circus had ignored the truth in front of them for decades because the lie and all it portended were so monstrous.  The Circus had been turned inside out and betrayed by her very own best, brightest, and most golden son.  Only two dotty old men and a fat woman had had the courage to see the horrible truth.  

 

“So Karla had Haydon killed?” Tarr asked.

 

Guillam shrugged, lying again.  “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” 

 

Smiley actually didn’t think so and Guillam thought he knew who had snapped Haydon’s neck in the woods, as cleanly as a gameskeeper would wring a bird’s neck.  In the last days before they’d sprung the trap at the safe house and caught an English mole, there had been a pavement artist so good that only Smiley had sensed his presence at first.  Guillam had glimpsed the shadow once and seen a tall, lean, hunched man. Last night, alone in his cold bed, Guillam had been able to connect the shape trailing Smiley to a gruff voice, a gentle manner carefully concealed, and a squash racquet first jammed behind the safe in his hated Brixton office and now mounted on the wall of the scalphunters’ common room. 

 

Jim Prideaux had killed Haydon, his friend, his partner, his lover.  Guillam was sure of it.

 

“So it’s all roses for you, Mr. Guillam.  You’re Smiley’s man, now.  But what about darling, Ricki?  I returned home with honours, to hear sweet Alleline talk; Mackelvore in Paris almost swallowed his own tongue to admit I was an acceptable person.”

 

“A matter of opinion to be sure,” Guillam replied.  “You have 30,000 pounds in your bank account, courtesy of Karla.  Smiley suggests you use it, with his compliments.”  Guillam carefully opened his jacket and removed the envelope Smiley had given him and handed it to Tarr over the table. 

 

Tarr gingerly took the heavy envelope and pried open the gummed flap with a chewed-on fingernail.  “So Ricki’s been a good boy?”

 

“Passports for you, your wife, and your daughter.  Australia might be good.”

 

Guillam went to the bar to get a pack of cigarettes; when he returned to the table, Tarr and the bottle of Calvados were gone.

 

He switched to coffee, sobered up, and crawled through the dirty streets toward home.  Guillam toyed with the idea of going out to Brixton and cleaning out his office.  He could send the racquet to Prideaux at that boys’ school.  He decided to do it later.  For now, he’d go home and sleep for a week.

 

At the front stoop of his flat, he saw that the splints he had wedged into the door that morning had fallen out.  Smiley had taught him the tradecraft – the splints alerted him if someone who didn’t know his handwriting entered the flat.   He stood there, fingering his key, feeling the weight of his gun on his belt. 

 

Then he heard the soft notes of a flute playing Massenet’s _Méditation_.

 

Guillam opened the door.

* * *

This became a combination of book and film.  In the book, Peter Guillam’s paranoia results in his evicting his flautist lover, Camilla.  Richard has become the musician.  The film eliminated Ricki Tarr’s family, his Malayan wife and daughter, Danny.  Both men are very much longing for others in book and film.  The film departs significantly from the book in that Tarr and Guillam have a fair bit of backstory together.  Tarr is one of Guillam’s scalphunters, Tarr goes to Guillam, not Oliver Lacon, when he returns to England, and Guillam drives Tarr to the Liverpool ferry before he leaves for Paris.  In both book and film, Smiley makes a point of lying to Tarr about Irina’s death.  Smiley is really a cold bastard, sometimes.  We don’t know what happens when Tarr returns to England from France.  This is intended to fill in those many gaps. 

 

Thanks for the great prompt and I hope you enjoyed it!

 

 


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